Chapter 56
Fifty-Six
- MARCELLA -
Three years ago.
I wake in the middle of the night to an eerie feeling. Too strong to ignore. As I lean up in bed, across my room the door handle slowly twists. So slow at first, I’m not entirely sure it is. Especially as I lock my door at night. Sliding off my sheets, I slip out of bed.
The door parts open.
In spills Crawford, his cracked teeth showing in his smile as he finds me. His sword drawn.
I flick my attention to the corner of the room where my sword is. I’ve gotten too comfortable with the idea of a lock on my door protecting me.
“Do you know how many wall sits I’ve had to do because of you?” he hisses, closing the door behind him.
I clench my fists, knowing as well as he does that I won’t be able to get to my sword without a fight. “You sure it had nothing to do with your piss-poor stamina that they thought they were doing you a favor?”
His eyes narrow, so easily goaded. Rather than moving for me, though, he moves away. “Let’s see if you’ll call it piss-poor when I’ve got you bent over.”
Anger stirs within my chest, tempting me to give in to the threat. But I laugh as I say, “If only your skills matched your confidence. Maybe it’s I who will have you bent over.”
He runs for my sword, and I dash after him. Once he grabs it, he swivels to me with an awful grin. Tosses it away.
Someone catches it to my left. One of the other guards, and two more slip into my room. Weapons drawn.
An ambush.
I slowly back up away from the door, running through my best course of action. There’s the window, but what then? I jump? My daggers are in the bathroom. I can roll over the bed to get to them.
I make a run for it, and they chase after me.
As I leap over the bed someone snatches my ankle.
Twisting, I rear back and slam my heel out onto one of the guard’s noses with a sickening crunch.
He lets go, but the other two grab my wrists, pulling me backward on the bed as Crawford stalks closer with a triumphant smile.
“I figured I’d bring some friends with me,” he says as he uses one hand to loosen his belt. “Word is you’re in the running for General. But between the four of us, I’m sure we can fix that.”
I collect all the saliva in my mouth and spit at his face. “Fuck you.”
Rage ignites in his expression as he wipes it slowly from his face and flings it off. Tossing his sword to the side, he rips his pants down as the third guard with a bloody nose snatches my ankles, holding my legs open around Crawford.
“I’m going to make you regret doing that,” Crawford growls, leaning over me and tugging my nightgown up.
Screaming, I buck and fling, working for my hands, my legs.
My door flings open off the hinges. A man is on the other side.
His silhouette is wrong—shoulders too broad. Neck too thick. Head tilted to listen to something only he can hear. His hands are unnatural—fingers too long, nails black and curved.
He drops to all fours and leaps across the room. Crawford is hovering above me in one second. The next, he’s gone. Tangled, pinned to the bed, and screaming on his back as the creature snarls. Crawford’s throat is ripped out with an audible tearing of flesh and squishing of blood.
A shower of red sprays onto us. The grips on my limbs disappears. The creature snaps toward the ones that had my wrists, and takes a few running steps toward me, shaking the bed with the force, and barely leaps over me.
Pain splits through my abdomen, and once the shadowed figure is gone, I curl up and drop off the bed to the floor. Blood stains my nightgown at an alarming pace, slipping down my leg and pooling onto the floor. On my hands and knees, I flick my attention up to my sword across the room.
Gritting my teeth through the pain warring for my attention, I push up and race across the room, nearly tripping on the blazing hot agony ripping through me.
As I snatch my blade and withdraw it from its sheathe, I turn to find the beast repeatedly ripping bites out of the third and final accomplice’s chest. The man stilling as the entire room is spattered in blood.
Ten, fifteen guards spill into the room toward the creature. Devin is one of them. As they work to contain the beast I fold to my knees, vision blurring and strength weakening under the severe blood loss.
I’m gone.
The memory of Crawford breaking into my room still haunts me, day and night. Of the other men and the sinister look in their gaze. Of the creature ripping them to ribbons. The same creature who split open my body.
It’s been well over a week now. Most nights I wake screaming, panting, sweating. Only to realize that when I blink away the grogginess of sleep, that I’m alone in a new room.
Despite my best efforts to maintain my position in the Close Circle, I’ve been pardoned for an undetermined amount of time while I heal.
It’s been agony, knowing I’ve been assaulted and scarred, and now stripped of my title.
Bound to this bed, with lady’s maids swarming in and out throughout the days and nights.
Healers buzzing around constantly to check how well the stitches in my belly and leg have held up.
The wound is deep. Deep enough it caused serious doubt I’d survive. Yet, as I always have, I’ve surprised them. Shown them that even if there’s a small chance of survival—I still make it mine.
But the more days that drag on where I can’t even pull myself to the bathroom on my own, can’t sit or bathe on my own, settles a dark cloud over me. I feel helpless. And I hate feeling that way. Even more so than terror. Than the pain.
King Cyrus has only been around when others have been.
Tossing me glances with an expression I can’t quite read.
Does he know that I saw him? That I recognized those eyes, despite everything else being different about the creature?
Or was it merely a fever dream, fading as I broke it and leveled out to a normal temperature?
I turn my head to my nightstand on my left, admiring a vase of blue roses with a note folded near it. I squint. Blue roses? I break open the wax seal on the note.
You’ll never have to see him again.
The next morning I write a letter and hand it to the lady’s maid to deliver to the King.
Will you come to me?
I wait in bed the rest of the day. In between bathroom breaks guided by my lady’s maids and meals brought to me on trays, I watch the shadows shift and stretch across the room as the sun flirts about in the sky before it sets.
Once the hallways fall silent, when dusk turns to night, there comes a knock at my door. Soft and gentle. Hesitant, almost.
“Come in,” I mutter aloud.
The doorknob twists, and I watch it with bated breath. Held until the door glides open slowly, revealing the man on the other side.
Cyrus. Dressed in a white shirt, long over his arms and loose, it cuts down to reveal parts of his sculpted chest, the hem tucked in a fitted dark pant. He steps in. The starlight washing his hair in a silvery glow.
“You…” I suck in a steady breath at the sight of him before me. Eternally elegant, yet a shadow of danger within the set of his broad shoulders. “You came.”
The serious look on his face stretches into a small, sad smile. “You called.”
I shift to sit up in my bed, allowing the pillows behind me to brace my lower back. As I wince, he races forward, hand outstretched to offer help. But as I settle into a new spot, he backs away.
Turning my attention to him, I ask, “Was it you that came the other night? When Crawford…” I swallow.
He nods slowly. “Yes, it was me.”
“So…it wasn’t all a dream?”
“No, it wasn’t.” His eyes fall from my face down to the bed, right to where my wound is.
I can’t speak. Can’t ask to what extent of what I saw was real. The beast’s claws had sliced me open when it launched over me toward the other guards.
But that’s impossible…right?
Maybe I’m misremembering, and Crawford or his cronies sliced me open with a blade.
Silence falls between us, thick and heavy like snow from a blizzard. Freezing both of us in place. Until he asks quietly, “Are…are you in a lot of pain?”
I nod, too proud to put the truth in a single word. I shouldn’t be so vulnerable with the man who employs me. What if he decides I can never return to his ranks? Whether it be based on guilt this happened to me, or the possibility it affects my expertise?
“I’m so sorry…” He slowly edges around the bed to the side I’m on and stops a few steps away and offers his hand. “Will you let me make it up to you?”
Meeting his eyes, I tilt my head to the side as I slowly rest my hand in his. “Yes?”
He gently shifts the blankets off my legs.
Luckily, it’s not a sight to frighten him.
The stitches and gnarled skin, bruised purple and black, is hidden under layers of bandages.
Gritting my teeth, I slowly rise off the bed, pain screaming in my abdomen and leg as I set my feet on the ground and push up.
He must see my pain, because he quickly steps closer to brace me. Strong hands framing my waist.
When I look up at him, he blinks. “I-I’m sorry. I should have asked to touch you first.”
“Thank you,” I murmur. My stubbornness to stand on my own since the incident quickly shaking away to nothing.
“Can you walk?” He steps back farther, sliding his hands from my waist to underneath my forearms to support me.
I try and take a step toward him. The pain doubles me over, and he steadies me before I can fall. “No,” I grunt out through the agony ripping through me.
“Can I carry you instead?”
When I nod breathlessly, he gently scoops me into his arms.
“Better?” he asks, face ever so close to mine.
“Yes,” I breathe, heart skipping a beat at the proximity. Of his hand cradling me to his chest, the other underneath my legs.
Clearing his throat, he walks me to the door, then out and down the hallway. Past the dining room, the throne room, then out into the courtyard.